


Follow Up

by Ylevihs



Series: How Not to Fall [25]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, Gen, Mitzi - Freeform, Retribution Spoilers, brief injury mentions, puppet use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-10-01 19:21:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20378194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ylevihs/pseuds/Ylevihs
Summary: Ortega arrives





	Follow Up

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot to upload this last week my bad

Ortega looked at him and recognition flashed in his eyes. He looked over Mitzi’s shoulder at where Daniel was still half reclined with Richard’s body on his chest. And then back at him. And then very briefly, oh. Very briefly. Blink and you’d miss it but Richard had gotten fairly used to the looks Mitzi received and Ricardo Ortega looked down. Not at Mitzi’s feet. 

Richard crossed his arms over her chest and tried not to let it sting. Over a decade old but the reminder that maybe if he hadn’t been. It wasn’t worth hunting down that particular thought, and the pip of jealousy made its way safely back into the warrens deep in the back of Richard’s mind. Ortega didn’t even look bashful, eyes having gone back to Danny on the cot. 

“Am I interrupting something?” which may have been a joke but then his eyes were back on Mitzi’s face and perhaps more worthy of note, back on her cheeks where there were still thin lines of teary makeup. A missed half beat. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” and his voice was cautious and gentle and edging into hero talking to a civilian territory. Talking to a victim territory. Sorry ma’am, don’t know if you know, but the limp noodle in the flyer’s lap is actually a dangerous villain. If you wouldn’t mind stepping this way? “I guess you’re the--,”

“Get inside,” Mitzi’s voice wasn’t as good at sharp. Not the way his own was. She made it sound like an actual invitation. Ortega’s expression shifted. Richard took a step back to make way, locking the door as Ortega willingly walked into the warehouse. It felt worse here than having him in his apartment. The realization struck Richard hard enough to make his next exhale with Mitzi’s lungs sharp. 

Ortega in his apartment solidified that the apartment had been becoming permanent. A place of contact. Of potential vulnerability to a man whom at the time, Richard couldn’t be sure was still an ally. Hadn’t wanted to think of as an ally. 

Having Ortega. Having Charge in his base was. Richard twisted the key ring in her fingers tight enough to make her knuckles crack. Raw and overexposed. He bit back at the tight feeling in her chest. It was okay. It was going to be okay. Not Charge. Ricardo. Best friend, remember?

“I guess you’re the contact he has in the underground?” Ortega finished voicing his thought, moving into the private space and dragging his presence in like a nuclear submarine into the depths of the ocean. The urge to. Richard flinched when Charge’s boot soles hit the blue plastic. Crinkled soft, then loud as Ortega took a very controlled step forward. Taking in, Richard could only assume, the equipment on the table and the blood on the tarp and the skin suit, bundled in a corner by the armor. 

Of course he wouldn’t be too surprised by Mitzi. Too smart for his own. No. It didn’t help to think of it like that. Ricardo was just smart enough to connect the dots. It was just unsettling to sometimes realize how many dots he had in the first place. Richard hadn’t wanted to admit it, but there was no way Ricardo running into Mitzi during that jog had been coincidence. There was no way for him to know that it was Richard inside of her, but he knew something. Had probably heard from his own underground contacts that Mitzi had arrived on the scene and was making waves and wanted to see for himself if she was something worth investigating. 

Maybe she had been. He clearly hadn’t sniffed out enough before Richard had simply told him. 

“He uh,” Ricardo was talking to Daniel now, stepping off the tarp in his direction. Slower. Still deliberate. Favoring his right side; how hard had he punched him? Not with the full strength of the suit, that had been for sure. He’d been careful. No broken ribs. Bruised maybe. Cracked maybe. It had been fun at first. It had felt something like the grown up sibling of sparring. Not actually throwing down but. Richard had assumed the fight had been posturing until Ortega brought up the plans and then. Well. What was there to fight about then? Ricardo was right, and Richard had had the beating coming and. “I didn’t,” another abandoned sentence before: “Sounded like it may have been a lung?” Doubt. Hopeful doubt.

A little. 

No. Yes? Let it be a little bit of worry and don’t worry about it. Daniel was allowed to be worried. Maybe Ortega was, too. 

“I think so,” Daniel’s head turned a little, eyes asking for confirmation. Richard nodded Mitzi’s head. 

“Not fully collapsed. It felt like a smaller puncture; a rib snapped and,” Richard made a gesture with her hands, cracking an invisible rib in the middle and moving one hand forward sharply but shallowly. It was easier to detach when he was in her head. The body on Daniel’s lap was just a body. The broken ribs and broken tooth and jacked up hip were just a list of injuries. It helped, if only because he didn’t have to think about how very soon he was going to have to feel them again. “It should fix itself with time and rest,”

“I’ll be careful not to move around too much,” and Danny was. Stroking gently at his hair. Comforting an empty shell. Still comforting him because he knew Richard could at least see him doing it and. 

“The hip is going to be worse,”

“Why?” Ricardo was looking around. Pointedly not looking at the intimate scene. Inspected various containers in the warehouse. Taking it in and. Oh. Looking for a place to sit down and finding it on a shorter container. Empty, as far as Richard knew. His hand went to his lower back and side. It was most likely Richard’s imagination, but he always thought he could hear it when Ortega’s cells were working to recharge themselves without an external jump. That. He hadn’t pushed him that far had he? Certainly not as hard as at the gala. 

“Dislocated the one that you kicked. On a normal person it wouldn’t be too bad. But there’s so much scar tissue there,” Richard could feel the pain at the back of even Mitzi’s tongue. Ghosts in surgical gloves. So much scar tissue. That was going to be the worst of it when he had to go back into his own body. Ribs would hurt as they healed but they would heal without too much issue. And the lung would be fine so long as he didn’t jostle the ribs too much. The hip was going to have a lot of very strong opinions and it was going to want to speak to managers about them. How many painkillers did he have in that little case anyway? It wasn’t like he made a habit of them, but. But. “No way I didn’t catch nerves when I reset it. Can only hope I didn’t trap any veins,” 

“What if you did? Uh. Get a vein trapped?” Daniel was looking down the length of Richard’s body. Richard couldn’t stop the whole body cringe and had to shake Mitzi’s shoulders to get the feeling out of her spine. The movement caught Ortega’s attention. 

Don’t let it get to.

“Only thing to do is dislocate it again and aim better next time,” he crossed the distance back to the cot and sat down next to his own covered feet. “I’ll probably need both of you to help if it comes to that. I’m not strong enough to dislocate it on my own and,” Daniel’s face tightened. Relaxed. Nodded. Richard wanted to take his hand and tell him that it wouldn’t be that bad. He could handle worse. That it would be better than the first time because at least then he’d be unconscious for it. 

“Okay,” Daniel agreed. 

“Happy to oblige, Nurse Mitzi,” because of course he would say that. Ortega, clearly still in discomfort, shot Mitzi a smile that ten years ago Sidestep would have agonized to have directed at him. Richard let the sneer show, completely unsure of how it would look on her features.

“Just try not to break it,” a broken hip would. Richard didn’t. Would it be worse than? Could it be worse than the? Knowing that it was his own hands trying to fix the damage and that when he was finished he was going to have to go back in and there would be. Wouldn’t be. 

“Richie,” Daniel’s voice. Ah, beans. He must have been making faces. 

“’m not a surgeon,” weak in Mitzi’s throat. “I just know enough to keep myself up and running,” the silence from Ortega was deafening. May as well out it before he could. And he was getting close. Richard glanced back up at him and the connections going on behind Ortega’s eyes were quick as. Well. As quick as. “I found this body a while ago,” it was as good a start as any. As good as it had been for Daniel, in any case. “In a hospital. In a coma. No friends or family that I could. So. I slipped into her head and walked her out of the hospital and--,”

“Stop,” Ricardo looked like he was going to be sick. “Stop, stop, stop. You’re. You’re you,” he lifted his eyebrows in Richard’s body’s direction. “In there,” not the most elegant way to put it but. 

“Yeah,”

“And you have been for--,”

“If I’m not in her body, she’s back in a coma. The doors are open but the lights aren’t on,” a car left running with the doors not only unlocked, but open. And a full tank of gas to boot. 

Ricardo rubbed his mouth and winced tight. Richard didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy. Yeah. Have fun picturing this cleavage now, pal. It probably wasn’t the reaction he should have had, but Richard didn’t let it bother him too much. Maybe Ortega’s attention on Mitzi had stung a little bit more than he wanted to admit to himself. 

“Ricardo. Do you know her?” Daniel stopped messing with Richard’s curls to dart his eyes between Mitzi and Ortega. 

“We ran into each other while jogging one day,” Richard offered with a soft shrug. Ricardo had tried to flirt and Richard had tried to shut him down. 

“Literally,” Ricardo’s voice was muffled by his hand now. It lifted from his mouth and was pressing in against his eyes, rubbing and pinching at the bridge of his nose. Ah, yeah. Had kept trying to flirt. Not in an aggressive way, but he’d asked Mitzi to the gala, hadn’t he? Had tried to see if maybe he could convince her…after all he was Charge. Richard had taken the invitation to break off any contact Mitzi had with him. He’d taken her body to deal with Mortum and the other elements of the underground he didn’t trust to know his face. Not to flirt with old crushes. “Richard what the fuck?”

“I needed her to keep my identity secret—there are a lot of people in Los Diablos who could still recognize me from the old days. And I kept her around for things like this,” Richard opened his mouth to continue only for Daniel to cut him off.

“He’s taking her body back to a hospital tomorrow,” he said. Firm. Expecting. Richard felt himself nodding and tried to ignore the way Ortega was still staring at him. “Or. Uh. He’s letting me take her body. Along with a grant to make sure she’s. She’s not gonna be forgotten about,” a sizeable one. Once the armor had been paid for and he’d allowed himself the luxury of a non-shithole of an apartment, Richard had set aside most of the money he made for it. 

“Were you gonna visit her too? Stop in and make sure she’s still as brain dead as when you found her?” Richard suspected more than a little of the venom in Ricardo’s voice wasn’t actually for him. It was hard to know what was going on in Ricardo’s head at the best of times; with his shoulders hunching in and expression crunching down, it was even harder to tell besides anger.

“If I did plan on visiting her, what of it?” felt his own brush of annoyance and worked on stamping it down. “I know it was wrong of me. But she’s already in a coma, there’s nothing I can do to fix that,”

“Isn’t there?”

“No. There’s nothing going on her head besides me,”

Ortega regarded him silently for a moment. “You’re sure?” and then folded under Richard’s glare. “Fine,” his hands dropped between his knees and he straightened his back, wincing against the soft pops. “You’re lucky I feel like your ass has been kicked enough tonight,” there was tilt to it that betrayed it to be good intentioned. Teasing. Ortega shifted back out anger to a sort of resignation that pulled somewhere in Richard’s diaphragm. 

“I am,” Richard agreed easily. The list of injuries was short enough to not be terrible. He tried not to think about how bad it might have gotten if Ortega’s anger hadn’t gotten the better of him and forced him into yelling at him instead of just breaking him more. 

“You are,” Daniel tacked on with an edge and Richard squirmed a fraction against the chill at the bottom of his stomach. It had been hard enough when he’d realized that Ortega was kicking his ass for a reason; if Daniel had been the one to show up first. There. 

Well.

There wouldn’t have even been the start of a fight. Richard probably would have. Wouldn’t have. At least he could still punch Ortega without wanting to kill himself over it. Even the thought of having to so much as swat at Daniel while in the Mad Dog armor made bile surge up his throat. 

Speaking of. 

“I should. While you’re both here,” he paused and rolled his shoulders, brushing off imaginary dust from Mitzi’s panty hose. “I should jump into my own body and see how badly I messed up my hip,” Daniel’s edge softened visibly.

“You? Okay. Um. If it’s bad you’ll just…You’ll be able to go right back into her?” It’ll be bad no matter what, lover boy. Richard didn’t voice the thought, taking a moment instead to recline back enough so that when her body went limp, Mitzi would stay secure on the foot of the cot. 

“Yeah,” he said instead, because it was easier. And a little kinder. Danny accepted it. “Hold me steady?” it was a half question. Nerves started to bleed in again because, oh he was very naked under that sheet and while it didn’t matter at all with Daniel, Ortega was going to be able to see all of the tattoos and the. 

It didn’t matter. 

Daniel nodded. “Of course,” he glanced sidelong at Ortega, still seated on his container. “We’ve got you,”


End file.
